Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 10/26/19

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Saturday, October 26, 2019

Shoplifters (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2018)

Shoplifters (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2018)

Cast: Lily Franky, Sakura Ando, Kirin Kiki, Mayu Matsuoka, Jyo Kairi, Miyu Sasaki. Screenplay: Hirokazu Koreeda. Cinematography: Ryuto Kondo. Production design: Keiko Mitsumatsu. Film editing: Hirokazu Koreeda. Music: Haruomi Hosono.

DNA, Hirokazu Koreeda seems to be saying, is overrated as a way of defining a family. Nothing biochemical seems to link the members of the family that Osamu (Lily Franky) and Nobuyo (Sakura Ando) have put together: waifs and strays, outcast from their biological families. Granted, Osamu and Nobuyo are criminals: He murdered her abusive husband, and they are now living on the pension Hatsue (Kirin Kiki) receives from her late ex-husband, supplementing that not only with whatever they can shoplift from stores but also with Hatsue's own larceny, pretending to the parents of Aki (Mayu Matsuoka) that she has been in touch with the young woman in Australia and receiving money from them to send to her. In fact, Aki ran away from home and now works in a peep-show, writhing erotically, though fully dressed, for patrons behind a one-way window. At some point Osamu and Nobuyo also found young Shota (Jyo Kairi) sleeping in a car and brought him home to help with the shoplifting. As the film begins, it's a cold February night and they come across little Yuri (Miyu Sasaki) shivering outside her house. When they discover bruises and burns on the little girl, signs that her parents have been abusing her, they decide to keep her, training her in their light-fingered ways. Dickens would have loved it, though he would have been forced by convention to restore law and order in a way that allowed everyone to live happily ever after. Law and order win out in Koreeda's film. Happily ever after doesn't. Great performances all around, including magical ones from the children, give Shoplifters the grounding it needs to be more than just a tearjerker.